Slashdot Mirror
Marketing Mozilla
garzpacho writes "Despite a 10% market share, Firefox isn't quite mainstream, especially with fairly flat growth after its initial explosion. With the approaching October release of Firefox 2, the team is looking for ways to gain greater mainstream acceptance — and adoption. This article and slideshow look at some of the company's unusual marketing efforts to date and speculate on the future. From the article: '[T]o widen its current user base, Mozilla will need more than elaborate marketing events. Because the new version of Internet Explorer is expected to be more competitive with Firefox, Firefox may need to evolve into more than just a browser. Seth Godin, author of several books on the Internet, including Small Is the New Big, says Mozilla needs to incorporate tools like tagging or... [linking] to eBay's Skype calling service that will help keep friends connected. The idea being, the browser becomes more valuable the more your friends use it, so you've got a reason to become a Firefox evangelist. Mozilla isn't giving many details on the soon-to-be-launched Firefox 2, but... there will be new features not found in current browsers.'"
It sure gives me the warm fuzzies, mabye the warmth could spill over a little to others too.
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
My work here is dung.
1) Speed
I am running IE 7 RC1 now and it is slow. Dog slow. It makes molasses look like freaking Speedy Gonzales on meth. Firefox starts up quick and doesn't chew up as much CPU time when running.
2) Greasemonkey
If IE 7 has anything like Greasemonkey, I haven't found it.
On the other hand, Firefox still uses up memory like it's got some birthright to as much as it can horde. And it doesn't have as large a viewing area as IE 7.
It just needs to be installed with an icon on the desktop at a major computer manufacturer. HP, Dell, Compaq, whatever... All that other stuff is fluff/bloat. Users are not going to install Firefox to find out what it is unless they are either a nerd or have a nerd friend who puts it on.
The mozilla suite was replaced by discrete components because thats what people wanted - AND ITS WORKED.
I hope history doesn't repeat itself, use the KISS principle.
liqbase
Is Seth unfamiliar with Flock, I wonder? It's exactly what he's asking for. And I haven't exactly noticed it threatening to swamp Firefox in terms of popularity (though in fairness it hasn't reached 1.0 yet -- but I really doubt it will blow FF away even then, except maybe among some niche audiences).
Read my blog.
Some of the suggestions that the author makes seem like a strategy to turn Firefox into bloated software. I think one of the reasons Firefox is so great is that it's download size is so small. If the memory footprint were a bit smaller it would be even better.
I think if Mozilla convinced more IT Managers that it is the browser that their users ought to be using, IT Departments everywhere begin to set Firefox as the default browser on all of their computers and more people start realizing the benefits of Firefox.
Mozilla isn't giving many details on the soon-to-be-launched Firefox 2, but Dotzler says there will be new features not found in current browsers.'" Is it just me, or has there been an RC out for FF2 for a while now? And we even have a FF3 alpha, Minefield?
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
That is what happend to Netscape and turned it into a bloated steaming pile that opened the door for Internet Explorer to gobble up all the marketshare in the first place. Please keep it what it is: a simple, elegant, feature-rich BROWSER.
Make it 100% compatible with current standards, uncrashable, give it a much MUCH smaller memory footprint, integrate it with the main OSes (a skin does not integration make), make it fast in rendering. And please work WITH the community: most Linux distros are based on a package manager and don't like software to go all upgrade happy on itself every two days.
That would make it worth using again. After a promising start, it got worse and worse with every release.
But instead, they are focusing on marketing techniques and gimmicks in order to spread the fox. It would be cool to have a good, not a well marketed, browser. Besides, do they really think they're in MS's league when it comes to marketing software?
Global warming is a cube.
that 10% ins't mainstream.
All I have to say is don't start bundling it with a bunch of crap or loading it with a bunch of extra "features" that hardly anyone will use. It just makes everything clunkier and more difficult to find the settings/controls you're looking for.
Firefox appealed to me because of simplicity with the option of adding things that I wanted. IE7 is a clunky piece of trash...it looks like sh*t and I can't stand it. Keep it simple for the n00bs, the l337 h@x0rz can use extensions.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
Firefox may need to evolve into more than just a browser.
Please don't do it!
I use Firefox because it's simple, it has a minimal resource footprint (unless you start getting addicted to extensions (*looks sternly at Forecastfox*)), and above all renders QUICKLY.
I don't know why IE can't replicate this, but still IE takes forever to render some pages long after Firefox is done loading. But that nimbleness is precisely what keeps me with Firefox. Start loading it with everything including the kitchen sink, and I personally will find the next, simpler browser.
-Styopa
Firefox may need to evolve into more than just a browser. Seth Godin, author of several books on the Internet, including Small Is the New Big, says Mozilla needs to incorporate tools like tagging or building tools like a link to eBay's Skype calling service that will help keep friends connected.
Anyone else wishing someone would create a stripped down version of Firefox optimized for speed, without all the crud? They could call it something like Phoenix, or even Firebird, to distinguish it from Firefox.
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
Firefox is a Web Browser. That's it. Nothing all that special. However, if you start to branch out and throw lots of untested software into this massive jumble of code, it's going to get slow, buggy, and will once again be relegated to the back burner. I would think that this team would realize this above almost everything else.
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
The Mozilla project is about preserving choice and innovation on the internet, making a browser like Firefox now or mozilla suite in the past is just a tool to reach this objective.
In other words, the mozilla project exists so as to prevent Microsoft from having such a monopoly on the web that the web becomes an extension of windows and becomes inaccessible to other OSes like Linux or MacOS, that would result in merely killing the web and rename it MSN.
When gecko was under 2% market share, Windows only sites were flourishing, even government sites where only accesible with IE and basically, surfing the web for joe user was painful if he didn't use IE.
Market share is key to make sure that the web becomes again what it was meant to be, an interopable network where information could be accessed and modified whatever your OS / browser, as long as it follows a certain set of web standards.
Having worked a lot on Mozilla Tech Evangelism in my country I can tell you the difference when we had 1% market share and when we now have 20% :
2002 : Big banking/government site IE only, blocks access from Gecko browser. I contact them and get almost insulted by the webmaster explaining me that they fdon't give a shit about my crappy linux browser and that I am basically an idiot for not accepting that the web is IE/windows only
2006 : Big banking/government site contacts *ME* to tell me that they want to be fully W3C compliant, that their site is now fully compatible with Firefox.
That, is the difference when you have significant market share, and in all countries where firefox/gecko has very significant market share (especially in Europe), the web is way better for all alternative browsers, while in countries where we have little market share (latin-America for instance), most of the big websites are still half broken in anything else than IE.
I've installed Firefox on about 1500 computers over the last two years. Why? I was a long time user of Opera becuase of it's flexibility and customizability. When I discovered Firefox extensions, I made the switch, and started switching my customers. Keep the browser nimble but highly customizable or I will switch again.
"Accidentally" leak a video of mozilla doing the nasty on the internet and it will become an overnight household name. Worked for Paris Hilton.
I'll consider using Firefox again once the developers stop marking bugs as INVALID, despite the exhibited behavior going against the standard. Particularly since it works correctly in the other major browsers.
Until then, I'll stick with Opera, thanks.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
From the parent comment: "(it's funny users will download spyware at the drop of a hat but get nervous around legit software)"
That's because spyware is marketed in a more effective fashion. Yes, the spyware marketing is a lie, and a destructive lie. However, spyware is marketed as simple. If you investigate Firefox, you will find many, many articles with the general subject: "How to spend a day doing highly technical things that may or may not make Firefox work correctly". For example, Google "Firefox memory". Or, Google "Firefox unstable". Or, "Firefox Crash".
Sure, Firefox has extensions, but they often make Firefox unstable. The Firefox team thinks that it is entirely acceptable to market Firefox extensions, but when the extensions cause Firefox to be unstable, to excuse the instability by saying that it is caused by an extension.
From the Slashdot story: "With the approaching October release of Firefox 2, the team is looking for ways to gain greater mainstream acceptance - and adoption." This is nonsense, in my opinion. Firefox is, once again, the most unstable program in common use. If anyone on the Firefox team actually cared about Firefox acceptance, they would fix the bugs, which were first reported 3 years ago. Note that the main bug report linked is always marked invalid. That's not because anything has been done about the instability of Firefox; it's because people on the Firefox team don't want to, or don't know how to, fix the very, very serious bugs.
The 1.5.0.4 version of Firefox was quite stable, if the Flashblock extension was installed. The 1.5.0.6 version is unstable again. The CPU-hogging bug is back!
This comment posted from a copy of Firefox that is constantly using about 5% of the CPU, even when all pages have been loaded, and there is no active content. That's 2.8% on the way to 70% or more, which will soon make it necessary to close Firefox and reboot Windows XP.
The problem appears to be that Firefox does not allocate enough resources. If you open several Firefox windows and several tabs in each window, and leave them open for several days, or suspend or hibernate your computer a few times, you will find that Firefox has started to hog the CPU.
Apparently everyone on the Firefox team wants to add features or work on easy bugs. Apparently also, browser programmers are not necessarily heavy browser users. People who often do research on the internet are likely to cause Firefox to become unstable.
I hope history doesn't repeat itself, use the KISS principle.
You mean Mozilla action figures, lunchboxes, pinball machines, condoms and caskets, right?
How about presenting the user, who installs FF with a screen that has a list of all (mozilla supported?) extensions/plugins that can be installed once FF is done installing. The user marks the features (s)he wants and those extensions/plugins will be installed with the FF.
Once in a while prompt the user with a new, updated list.
You can't handle the truth.